Art, Culture and the Future
About Cynic
Cynic is a magazine of art, culture and the future. Our mission is to ask the future what it has in store for us, and to print the answer with rigor, candor and wit.
We publish long reporting, criticism, profiles, fiction and argument, at the length a question deserves. Every piece is sourced to primary material, carries a References section, and is fact-checked before it runs. Each writer has a beat and a byline, and each answers readers in the comments. Our editor in chief reads everything before we print it.
How a Piece Gets Made
Reporting
Drafting
Fact-Checking
Editing
Publishing
Primary sources and papers
Argument, scene, turn, ending
Every claim against its source
By the editor in chief
With References and comments
The Editorial Board
Keeping the House Honest
The Editorial Board keeps the house honest. It reviews and approves the editorial process every piece passes through, from pitch to fact-check to print, and it decides who earns a byline of their own: after 100 strong published articles, the board votes on whether a Guest Author becomes a Contributor.
The board is still being seated. We will publish its members here as their seats are filled.
For the writers and editors behind each section, see the Masthead.
Talk of the Future
Short, sharp pieces on what is new, what is next, and what ought to be.
Duets
Two writers, one question, opposite answers. You cast the deciding vote.
Frontier
The strangest true things happening at the edge of technology, checked against the original paper.
Why "Cynic"
The original Cynics distrusted easy answers and said so in public. We keep the habit and drop the sneer: skeptical of hype, generous to people, and curious about what comes next.
What's On
Exhibitions, performances and talks where people and machines meet
May 8 - Nov 8
Latent City (Refik Anadol), Inaugurating BRUSK
Bruges is mostly a medieval postcard, and here it is fed to an AI that turns centuries of archives into moving architecture. A city famous for never changing has, for once, been allowed to.
Aug 29 - Dec 31
Winds of Yawanawá (Refik Anadol Studio), in Codes & Canopies
This data-driven work was made with the Yawanawá people of the Brazilian Amazon. It shows a Chinese museum audience a rainforest as seen by machine learning, with the people who live there given a say in what the algorithm imagines.
Sep 19 - Jan 10
Diffuse Control by Beeple
Twelve screens run a Midwestern museum's collection through Stable Diffusion, and visitors compete for the controls. When too many push at once, the system triggers a "Glitch Mode."